Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) said Cuban security agents "stormed the Santa Teresita de Nino Jesus Roman Catholic Church" in the city of Santiago de Cuba in the south-eastern area of the island nation, apparently to stop an anti-government protest.
The priest of Santa Teresita church in Santiago de Cuba, Jose Conrado Rodriguez, told reporters that at least five people were detained during the crackdown on Tuesday, December 6, in the Americas’ only one-party communist-ruled state.
"They barged in spraying gas in the faces of people from those spray cans, and went about dishing out blows and shouting," Conrado Rodriguez reportedly said,
GROUP PROTEST
"Immediately prior to the church service, the group had gathered to protest at the imprisonment of three other pro-democracy activists, Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina, Eliecer Consuegra Rivas and Gerardo Sanchez Ortega," CSW told BosNewsLife.
"Jaqueline Echevarria, the wife of Gerardo Sanchez Ortega, had held a fast and prayer vigil at her home, before marching with the other activists from the Santiago Cathedral to the Santa Teresita del Nino Jesus Church."
She reportedly told police it was her right and duty to go to church to pray for her husband. CSW said that it has learned from another human rights group, Directorio, that police responded with insults when the parish priest questioned their actions. “One activist was released as she had recently given birth, but the other seventeen remain in prison,” CSW said.
"DEEPLY DISTURBED"
CSW’s Advocacy Director Tina Lambert told BosNewsLife that her group has been “deeply disturbed by the actions of the Cuban authorities in Santiago” de Cuba. “The physical attacks on human rights activists, who were peacefully exercising their right to worship, within the sanctity of the church itself sets an alarming precedent.”
Lambert said that reports out of Cuba over the past eighteen months indicate that religious liberty "is deteriorating" significantly. The latest reported detentions came less than two weeks after activists told BosNewsLife that evangelical pastor Yordis Ferrer and several other human rights workers were detained shortly after security forces broke up a meeting commemorating political prisoners in the capital Havana.
"We call on the Cuban authorities to ensure that their security agents uphold fundamental religious rights and to immediately release the seventeen men and women who were arrested while attending Mass," Lambert said.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro has consistently denied human rights abuses and the existence of dissidents, saying detained activists are merely “mercenaries of the United States” and opposed to his revolution. The 81-year-old is recovering from a series of intestinal surgeries that forced him to temporarily hand over power to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006. Officially he is still president, while his brother the ‘acting president’.
